Xia, a video installation by Montreal based artist Philomène Longpré, caught my eye recently at the Gallery 101 show Body Tracks | Traces de corps (10 June – 9 July) in Ottawa. It was given prominence, taking over the entire back half of the exhibition space with the rest of the, mainly video, works all reduced to monitor size. It certainly needed and warranted the space.

Victoria Cote is a recent graduate from the Undergraduate program in Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. She was honored by Artengine for her work in the media arts, and her contribution to the graduating class show.
My abstract sculptural installation Untitled (pillars) explores and emphasizes the quality and texture of acrylic plexiglass tubing. By challenging the material and depicting its visual characteristics in different ways, I am able to encourage the viewer to more closely analyze the work. The repetitive process in which I work culminates in organic shapes and abstract sculptural forms.

Artengine is a production center for electronic art. We are also the Electric Fields festival and a virtual hub for artists and cultural groups across disciplines. We are also a cultural information network distributing event information to thousands of people everyday. We are alot of different things, but most importantly we are where technology comes to play.

This interview takes as a starting point the VIDEO CACHE project. Mél’s research into defunct video art repositories online raises many questions about the ephemeral nature of digital culture, and the social/cultural parameters that frame the preservation of and access to such materials. VIDEO CACHE is a research creation project emerging from Mél Hogan’s […]

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” – Walter Benjamin Frank Bretschneider EXP (Raster-notion) Photo courtesy of Elektra The majority of Elektra 12 performances were characterised by pulsing, glitching, looping, […]

The Elektra 12 festival, presented in Montreal from 4 to 8 May 2011, followed a similar pattern to previous years. During the day was the “international marketplace”: a series of short presentations by artists and administrative types talking about their work. In the late afternoon were openings of exhibitions dotted around town. Then from 9pm […]

After making tiny vibrating robots from the head of a toothbrush, dipping it in paint and watching them spin on paper, I asked the kids if they were the artists or if the bots were. Mostly the answer was “It tickles!” In this final workshop for 6 to 8 year olds at the LCRC‘s after school […]

In front of a room of 25 astonished faces I dipped my finger into the brine and dabbed the last of the water onto the flower, the LED popping on and cries of “But but…where’s the battery?” echoing amid “Wait…what?” This workshop focused on understanding how a battery works by taking the traditional model of […]

Morton’s installation welcomes interactivity through the one irresistible object that begs to be pushed: the button. Toy farm animals (and the odd T-rex) have been re-wired and fitted with buttons and sliders, sorted into groups, and then presented on eight pedestals in a kind of fantasy tableau.